WNYC's Radiolab is a masterpiece of radio science. I'm a late joiner to the "Jad and Rob" party but I've finally caught up on season 4 during my bike rides to and from the lab. The whole series is free to download on their website and I highly recommend listening to it.

To justify this recommendation I've decided to post some of the great things I learned from listening to Radiolab, in reverse chronological order, to whet the knowledge appetite of the reader:

• A study of laughter found 85% of laughing is proceeded by stuff that is not a joke (Laughter)
• You can engineer an E. Coli culture can smell like Wintergreen when it's growing, and Bananas when it's completed growing (So-Called Life)
• People who admit to thinking about raping or being raped by an individual make worse athletes (Deception)
• Our brains produce opium (Placebo)
• Harvard professor Robert Stickgold got a cover of Science thanks to Tetris (Sleep)
• Scientists have erased memories in rats (Memory)
• Lobsters are immortal (Mortality)
• The number of the beast, 666, was once 616 (Detective Stories)
• In Mandarin, there is a single word that means mother, hemp, horse, and reproach depending on the tone it is enunciated (Musical Language)
• A study found killing 1 person by a lever to save 4 people is accepted whereas killing 1 person by pushing them off a bridge to save 4 people is not acceptable, regardless of age, gender, or education level (Morality)
• Some people have a condition where they lose all feeling within their own body (Where Am I?)
• Dr. Peter Diamandis funded the X-prize for the first private-sector manned space flight by making a 10 million dollar "bet" with an insurance company that it could be done (Space)
• It is not known how thousands of fireflies shine can in synchronization (Emergence)
• The author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, may have had psychogenic dwarfism (Stress)
• Monkeys have no introspective consciousness (Who Am I?)
• Your brain activity to wiggle your finger spikes before you "decide" that you want to wiggle your finger (Beyond Time)
• The people of the Andaman Forests in India have a scent calendar where they tell the seasons based on the scent of various fruits and flowers (Time)

Lost is over until 2009 and Battlestar Galactica followed suit last Friday. So what the heck am I going to watch on TV for the rest of the year?

Most likely J.J. Abrams new Sci-fi series: Fringe. The 2 hour premier, leaked 2 months ahead of time, with a 2 x 5 million dollar budget, so I thought I might as well give it my 2 cents. Especially since the "Fringe" in the title refers to ...FRINGE SCIENCE!

As noted on Wikipedia, fringe science is a bit classier than the pseudoscience which science bloggers love to hate. It's supposedly "legitimate" research using the scientific method but in a context which deviates from the mainstream beliefs. Not generally a crowd you want to fall in with but you can't argue that it makes good television, just look at the success of Heroes and X-Files!

Speaking of those shows, if you've watched them, then you won't be surprised by the premise of Fringe. There's some ___insert shady organization___ covering up ___insert controversial research___ and it's up to ___insert protagonists here___ to unravel the mystery.

I hate to spoil anything plot-wise, but, I have yet to see a major difference between this show and your standard X-Files episode. It just seems like an updated X-files with a less likable cast. Some notable differences include:

• Weird giant floating 3D letters instead of classy typewriter-style letters.
• Introduction has words like "Dark Matter" and "Nanotechnology" instead of "Paranormal Activity".
• Lead actress character isn't as hot as Scully, Lead(?) actor isn't as hot as Mulder.
• Larger special effects budget means more goriness, but less creepiness.
• Aliens replaced with mad science experiments gone wrong (just a theory).

At least they got one thing right about the stereotypical scientist, they sure love their coffee! 

Based solely on J.J. Abrams work with Lost and the words that fly by in the introduction of this show I'd say this show has some serious chemical potential energy. I'll reserve judgement until I see the first season, but Sci-fi fans should be all over this.

Meet Walter White. Standing in front of a plume of red phosphorus gas in the middle of the desert without pants. He's a lot like me, sitting in the middle of the Writers Guild strike, in a desert of television repeats, without pants. But that's all about to change after the jump when I tell you about this awesome show and put on some pants!

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